The century-old Merriam Theater, which the Kimmel Center acquired last fall, has a handsome old interior – as well as painfully cramped seats (which some patrons have to walk through offices to reach), poor acoustics, outdated sound and light equipment, and dressing rooms that literally used to be stables. The new plan is for the Kimmel to partner with a developer to tear down the seven-story building currently housing the Merriam and completely revamp the place (saving the auditorium’s architectural details) while building a skyscraper above it.

Magazine sales have generally been falling since the day the inventor of the internet said: “Hey, why don’t I invent the internet?” But the latest ABC figures, released this week, show that sales of certain titles are actually going up. News and current affairs magazines are becoming more popular – but celebrity, gossip and fashion publications are still struggling.

Yes, Hanya Yanagihara (author of A Little Life) has a fair number of books. And she has some opinions about how to shelve them, too: “Anyone who arranges their books by colour doesn’t truly care what’s in the books.”

The American National Ballet, its founders say, is a “start-up,” and they have plans for a company rooted in Charleston and a touring company. But then “there’a for-profit dance conservatory that enrolls talented young dancers from across the country, a for-profit marketing and media company called Jete Digital, a for-profit dancewear company and a performing arts foundation that can lend financial might to the enterprise.”

Basically, it’s the politics, stupid: “News and current affairs magazines are becoming more popular – but celebrity, gossip and fashion publications are still struggling. It’s a trend that Sarah Penny, editor of Fashion Monitor, puts down to the news agenda. ‘I think that we can all agree that the past 18 months have been pretty tumultuous within current affairs.'”

What people who own a nonprofit are doing at the border of Hamtramck and Detroit: “They’ve got eight open lots. They garden on a few of them, but that still leaves plenty of space for other stuff. And in this part of the city, there aren’t any playgrounds. So this summer, Lerman and some neighborhood artists started a free, week-long day camp.”

Peak TV and the success of shows ranging from Empire to Transparent, added to the strong awareness of April Reign’s #OscarsSoWhite campaign, have transformed the press tour from triumphant bragging to fierce discussions and defensive moves from networks – especially the exceedingly white and male CBS – about diversity in front of and behind the camera.

He cut off his Jewish friends after the Dreyfus Affair, and he read a nationalist, anti-Semitic newspaper, and as the 21st century deals with the fact that we haven’t actually left murderous racism behind, “it also becomes harder to relegate Degas’ inhumanity to an artifact of a time when racism and bigotry were more acceptable. His cruelty becomes, instead, an indelible component of his artistry.”

Yes, that’s James Ivory of Merchant Ivory fame. “Despite 50 years of critical acclaim and Oscar recognition, plus British actors Tom Hiddleston and Damian Lewis lined up to star in his production, financiers are refusing to part with their money. ‘They look at you like you’re crazy. … There is an assumption that there is no money to be made from such an investment.'”

“The new Berlin chief, in his mid-forties, is as close as you can get to being an unknown commodity. He has never given a media interview (my request for an off-the-record coffee was coolly declined) and has made just five commercial recordings. He refuses to play maestro games — you conduct my orchestra, I’ll conduct yours — and is no respecter of vanities. When the Berliners handed him Sir Simon Rattle’s job, Petrenko swiftly renewed his Munich contract until 2021. He’ll take Berlin in his own time.”

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